"The president has given orders to take the necessary steps to return the most valuable artifacts of the Amu Darya treasure," President Emomali Rakhmon's office said in a statement.

Amu Darya is the modern name of the Oxus River, which marks the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border.

The Oxus treasure consists of about 170 objects dating from the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., including vessels, model chariots and figures, armlets, seals, finger-rings, dedicatory plaques and coins.

The artifacts were discovered in the 19th century. Much of the collection was bequeathed to the British Museum by a wealthy British benefactor, Sir August Wollaston Franks, who bought the artifacts from merchants and a British archaeologist, according to the British Museum. - Pravda.ru